Last night, I watched Robert Redford's new documentary, All the President's Men Revisited and I'd figured on writing a long piece about it this morning. I awoke though to find that Beverly Gage had written a long and much more incisive review than I could have mustered, covering all the same points and then some. The film's a pretty good overview of the surface version of the story for anyone who doesn't know it.
Beyond that, it's still the unquestioning portrait of heroism by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein presented in the 1976 movie. It still gives them almost sole credit for exposing Nixon's crimes. It still doesn't get too deep into the weeds of how and why it all happened. There are some nice, short sound bites from surviving players and cameos by folks like Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow. And as Gage notes, there's this odd, recent interview with a crying Ben Stein, who still seems unable to grasp the concept that maybe Richard Nixon did something wrong.
One point the doc does make is that Nixon wasn't "done in" by his enemies. The near-certain impeachment that prompted his resignation was not, as he and his defenders liked to claim, because Democrats had engineered a coup d'etat. It was because Republicans, including Barry Freakin' Goldwater, had told him they would vote against him. Redford here sees that as bipartisan courage. I'm more inclined to think they just realized the damage that would be done to their party if they didn't get rid of the guy.
Half the Republican voters in this country had decided Nixon was a crook. The other half either didn't think he'd done anything wrong — the Ben Stein POV — or thought he had but so what? I had a friend then who insisted that even if Nixon had murdered a couple of nuns, he shouldn't admit guilt and hand his political enemies a "win." If you were a Republican congressperson or senator then, you had a big problem with those pending impeachment votes. Do you vote with Nixon and lose half the G.O.P. vote or do you vote against him and lose the other half? Either way in most districts or states, you lose your seat to a Democrat.
Democrats didn't really want to oust Nixon. Left in office, he was "the gift that keeps on giving," bringing down his party and all that it stood for. It was his "friends" who showed him the door, getting him out before they had to vote.
Anyway, that's one of the things I think was wrong with the documentary…and by the way, I don't see that it's reairing soon but when it does, it is worth catching. I think Redford overglorified Bernstein and Woodward and congratulated himself a lot for the '76 movie but it still provokes much thought. This little online-only clip expands a bit on a question only briefly touched-upon in the film. My own view is very much in line with James Carville's…
